SBIR Phase I: Scalable fabrication of mesoporous thin-films for production of efficient dye-sensitized solar cells

这个小型企业创新研究(SBIR)第一阶段项目旨在应用一种专门的方法来开发一种快速、大规模和廉价的薄膜沉积技术。其目标是实现低成本的大规模生产，并保持高效染料敏化太阳能电池的优化纳米结构和薄膜性能。该项目更广泛的社会/商业影响将是降低染料敏化太阳能电池所用材料的生产成本的潜力。与其他太阳能电池技术相比，染料敏化太阳能电池技术具有以下潜力：(1)由于组成电池的元素丰富，成本低；(2)重量轻，从而降低了安装成本，并增强了灵活性。然而，光伏行业最近的进步设定了1美元/瓦的成本标准。如果染料敏化太阳能电池要与目前市场上的技术相媲美，薄膜沉积的成本就必须降低。该项目的目标是开发一种高通量和大规模的薄膜沉积工艺，这将使通过染料敏化技术的太阳能发电更具成本效益，从而更容易获得。

This Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase I project aims to apply a specialized method to develop a rapid, large-scale and inexpensive thin film deposition technology. The goal is to enable the low-cost mass production and maintain the optimized nanostructures and film properties of efficient dye-sensitized solar cells. The broader societal/commercial impact of this project will be the potential to reduce production costs of materials used in dye-sensitized solar cells. Compared to other solar cell technologies, dye-sensitized solar cell technology has the potential of (1) low cost due to the abundance of elements that constitute the cell; (2) lightweight thus reduced installation cost and enhanced flexibility. However, recent advances in photovoltaics industry set a cost standard of $1/Watt. If dye-sensitized solar cells were to be at par with current technologies on the market, the cost of thin film deposition has to be reduced. This project targets on the development of a high-throughput and large-scale thin film deposition process, which will make the solar electricity via dye-sensitized technology more cost-effective and thus more available.